


Ms. K and her Short-Lived Stay at Prufrock Prep

by SioDymph



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Disguise, Gen, Teacher & Student Bonding, asoue fic4fic, fic4fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 07:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14159337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SioDymph/pseuds/SioDymph
Summary: Kit goes to Prufrock undercover to find some answers but she only seems to discover more questions.A gift for “conundrum-esoterica” on tumblr for the asoue fic4fic event!





	Ms. K and her Short-Lived Stay at Prufrock Prep

**Author's Note:**

> Hello conundrum-esoterica! I decided to write about Kit. Her experience going undercover as a teacher at Prufrock specifically since that was always something I was always curious about. Plus it was fun getting to explore how Kit acts and thinks. I hope you enjoy this little look at her misadventures!

Sometimes it can be difficult going somewhere that used to be your home. Walking into a place that once was so familiar to you and feeling as if you stumbled into some strange new place instead. Even if all the buildings are the same and each room is exactly as you remember it, something always feels off. And you can’t help but wonder if that home in your memories is gone forever, replaced by this place that only looks like your home.

Kit Snicket couldn’t help but feel this way as she approached Prufrock Preparatory School. Years ago she had come here as a young student, an apprentice learning of the world and who she could trust. But now she was coming here as an undercover associate posing as a school teacher and the school couldn’t feel less cold and foreign to her. She passed through the front gates with their cryptic message, one she could recall reading thousands of times. She walked by the old stone buildings covered in moss and lichen, inside as a little girl she had spent hours learning and training here. For several years of her life this is where she and her dearest friends and associates met together, grew up alongside one another, prepared to fight a world filled with fire…

But it seemed that while they were gone, searching for fires throughout the world, one had begun here in the very place they once cared about the most. She had heard accounts of the Baudelaire and Quagmire children’s stay here. What they went through at the hands of Olaf and Nero. It would have broken her heart if she let herself think about it too long.

But she couldn’t afford to let herself become compromised. She had a job to do. The Quagmires might have been stolen away from the school and the Baudelaires expelled but there was still matters to attend to at Prufrock. Nero was still Vice Principle, the teachers were still horrendous, and the truth had to be revealed.  

Kit mission here was simple. She was to infiltrate the school, disguising herself as a replacement for Mr. Remora who decidedly retired after a traumatic experience. From here she was given only two priorities: collect as much intel as she could on the suspicious activities of the Prufrock administration and drastically improve the education for the poor students attending the school.

After a thankfully brief meeting with the horrible Vice Principal, Kit’s newest disguise Ms. K was sent to her classroom where she would be teaching language arts for grades 7-9. It was nearly identical to every other classroom in appearance. Five rows of four desks that had seen better years, a rickety desk that wasn’t fairing much better and blackboard with an insufficient amount of chalk. And it seemed all the classrooms were identical in smell as well. A musty-mold stench seemed to either be sinking down from the ceiling or rising up from the floor boards. Perhaps both, Ms. K mused wrinkling her nose at the sight of suspicious black and green specs clustered about the room. After her investigations at Lousy Lane she had become increasingly cautious around any organisms from the fungal kingdom.

Regardless of the grim state though, Ms. K got to work. She took the time to push the annoying rows apart into groups of four so the students could talk amongst themselves easier and work together. And trying to breathe a little life into the room she spared a little piece of her chalk-nubs to write a short but warm welcome on the chalk board. Had she more time to prepare she would have hung up a few posters perhaps, but seeing as she was hired here last minute, there’s wasn’t much else she could do.

With only a few minutes to spare she began double checking her disguise in her hand mirror. Making certain that her contoured make-up hadn’t smeared and her bulbous fake nose and blond wig hadn’t become unattached. Everything seemed to be in working order. Kit looked like the quiet but reputable Ms. K.

With confidence that she wouldn’t be found out she tucked her mirror back into her pocket, stood by the door to the class and prepared to greet her new students.

~~~

After her first lesson Ms. K realized she had grossly underestimated just how bad things had become at Prufrock. Building maintenance and school administration was one thing. But the curriculum… Oh goodness… The curriculum had become a complete joke.

The bookshelves were so understocked. Not that that would matter, then children told her they never ever read independently or in groups. She was told instead of actually reading books their former teacher would simply recite them stories out loud and then quizzed the students on the miniscule details of each story. No analyzing, no grammar or vocabulary, no interpretation, no use of true critical thinking at all! Quizzing students on simple details in a story might have been appropriate for younger elementary classes but certainly not for the middle-school grade level! Kit was astounded at just how horrible it all was.

This was beyond suspicious activity. This was direct manipulation! Prufrock’s administrators were setting their student up for failure. And Ms. K feared this was being done on purpose. It was no secret many children born from both sides of the schism still attended the school. And by barely teaching the children anything truly informative or inspiring they would be crippling the next generation. Not to mention the poor children themselves, stressed beyond belief from all their other “difficult” classes. In truth the only difficulty for Prufrock’s classes was that all the teachers seemed to teach basic math and reading as over-complicated traps where no matter what the student did they’d end up wrong. No science classes to be seen anywhere on the campus, no art classes of any variety. It was no wonder the children here were miserable, Ms. K would be too if she was forced to attend under such conditions. It disgusted her.

To keep children from learning, to make them hate educations, to make them feel unworthy of gaining knowledge was one of the cruelest ways a person could torture children without being physical in Ms. K’s book.

But she had no plans to simply sit by and let this madness continue any further. No, she was going to save these children, even if it meant only saving a single class of middle-school students. Her plan so far was somewhat simple, getting rid of these horribly simplistic tests and instead giving her student more advanced questions about character motive, cause/effect and the like. And absolutely no more listening to the teacher recite stories monotonously. Her goal was to have at least 5 books for every student; 2 to read as a group and speak openly about and 3 that the children could pick to read in their free-time and write short essays for. Already she was formulating a way to smuggle in more books. More appropriate reading material. Even Various Freely-written Documents…

She wondered if she would be able to get any new reading material while all her students were away for their lunch break. Perhaps she could put on a new disguise as a janitor so she could come and go from the Prufrock classrooms without raising suspicion, go find some books in town, she could hide them in garbage bags so no one would be the wiser to her plan.

However before she could even think of looking for some cleaning supplies there was a meek knock on her classroom door. Ms. K put her plan to the back of her mind and reminded herself of her current backstory. She was Ms. K. The new reading teacher at Prufrock. A soft-spoken lady who enjoyed being around children. And whose favorite color was periwinkle, favorite music genre was experimental jazz and favorite food was tuna salad. Keeping all this in mind, she opened the door to greet whoever had come to visit her during the middle-school lunch break.

To her surprise it was three of her pupils, each with a large tray of greasy cafeteria food in their hands. The first thing she had her classes do was introduced themselves and Ms. K had taken the time to memorize each child’s name and face with her photographic memory. Granted she didn’t tell her students that. Instead she gave them a sweet smile after feigning a bit of nervousness.

“Why if it isn’t Rosaline, Elliot and Jane! What brings you three back to my classroom so soon?”

Rosaline Morello, a young lady with a gigantic plume of curly raven hair looked to both of her friends before turning back to Ms. K. Her hair bounced whenever she moved as if it had a mind of her own. “Uh, you said earlier we could always come to you if we ever had a problem or needed help.”

She had said that earlier, when she first introduced herself in fact. So she nodded, still smiling. “Correct! And what is it you three want help with?”

“Well,” Rosaline began fidgeting slightly under Ms. K’s gaze. “We were wondering, if the three of us could eat lunch in here? With you?”

“Aren’t you supposed to eat lunch in the cafeteria?” Ms. K asked. “After all that is the school’s policy, I’m afraid.”

Rosaline began biting at her lip and didn’t try to justify herself. Ms. K could see irritation in her eyes at not getting her way immediately. It was almost like she was trying to stop herself from raising her voice or acting bratty. Seeing Rosaline clam up, her peer, a young boy named Elliot Sylvestre decided to pipe up. Trying to stand a little taller under Ms. K’s kind but piercing gaze.

“While those are the rules, there recently has been another rule has been put in place just before the three of us were enrolled this semester. After the madness last semester Vice Principle Nero decided that the cafeteria benches are a privilege that only students with a guardian’s permission can use. So anyone… Well, anyone who…” He trailed off, looking down at his feet, cheeks red with embarrassment and his wavy brown bangs fell over his eyes.

But while he too fell quiet the third child, Jane Doe, finished his thought frankly. “Any kids living in the Orphan Shack can’t eat their meals in the cafeteria, we have to go outside. So we were wondering if today we could eat in here with you since its very hot out.” Her voice held an anger as fiery as her ginger hair that was pulled back into a pony tail.

Hearing the truth made Ms. K furious likewise. The utter nerve of that no-good, nightmare of a violinist…

Without any more interrogating Ms. K invited all three children inside. Her janitor-book-smuggling plan could be put on hold until tonight. For now she offered the children tuna salad sandwiches and played a cassette of experimental jazz on an old dusty boom box left in the room by Mr. Remora.

The children politely declined the sandwiches and pulled their desks close to form a symmetrical circle with Ms. K’s. And as the cassette played the children began to open up to their new teacher.

~~~

Ms. K had been teaching for over a month. But as the grading period was coming to a close she now faced with two problems.

The first being that apparently Carmelita Spats enjoyed the class the way Mr. Remora had instructed it. Perhaps she was an auditory learner, or maybe she just liked making everyone around her miserable. But either way Ms. K got word from a reliable associate that the Spats had gone to Nero furious, and with a copy of The Daily Punctilio at hand. An issue where they published a list of books that had allegedly been banned. Ms. K was no fool, she knew many of the books she had given her students were likely on that list. And she also realized angry, powerful parents usually meant the firing of a teacher or worse. No matter what happened Ms. K realized her days existing as a reading teacher for Prufrock academy were numbered and she’d have to wrap up her mission rapidly now.

The other problem however, was one she created for herself. Many breakfasts, lunches and dinners had come and gone and Rosaline, Elliot and Jane, (or rather Rosy, Eli and Juniper as they preferred to be called) had become her favorite pupils. And she had a haunch that these children were related to volunteers someway.

Rosy had come from a family of old money that had all passed away a few months ago from a suspicious mass-poisoning one night at a dinner party. Though the police reported it as allergic reactions. Eli too came from a wealthy background, his parents used all their trust fund money for altruistic purposes until they were killed several years ago, also due to mysterious circumstances. The only child who didn’t fit the description quiet was Juniper. Poor child had been an orphan her whole life juggled from foster home to foster home until she was placed here in Prufrock.

But even if none of the children had any official family connections, they each made wonderful candidates for initiation. Brave, smart, loyal to one another, but most importantly they all loved to read and learn.

Rosy loved to study different places around the world, their cultures and stories. Ms. K told her there was a name for people like that, an anthropologist, and Rosy held the title with pride. And while Eli also loved to study new places, he was much more interested in the unique animals and plants that lived around the world. He had been elated to also learn that such a thing had a name too, an ecologist. And Juniper loved movies, specifically the cameras. How they work, how to create good or unique lighting. And while Ms. K didn’t think it had as much scientific-based substance she told her those were important traits for any cinematographer.

She had tried for two weeks now, slowly prying at the children about their families and personal interests. But she still couldn’t tell if the children were volunteer-unique or simply ordinary-unique. Juniper’s former family was as a good as nonexistent since the child had no memories of them. She had hackled her associates endlessly to find any information on the Morello and Sylvestre families, but they had yet to return to her with anything substantial. She wanted answers but she knew she was running out of time. Fast.

The day she heard Nero and several security guards marching towards her classroom she made a decision. It was dangerous to make decisions like this without knowing the full story but Kit didn’t have a choice. She had to go with her instincts.

While the orphans weren’t looking Kit threw a glass paper-weight out the window.

“What was that?” Eli asked first.

“Nothing.” Kit replied.

The children seemed perplexed, no doubt noticing how different Ms. K had been acting during lunch. Juniper and Eli seemed confused.

But then Rosy tried to argue back hesitantly. And Kit saw a spark of recognition in the child’s eyes. “Uh, Ms. K are you sure it was nothing? I could have sworn I heard a noise…”

That was good enough for Kit. Just as Nero and the guards banged on her door Kit rose up, grabbed Eli and Rosy by the ankles, and raced out the window. Doing her best to ignore the surprised exclamations from the children in her arms, the shouts of adults behind her demanding she come back and especially the lone voice crying out for them not to leave her behind.

She was going to save these children… Even if it meant only saving two…

 


End file.
